Today a group of us from CCK ventured out into the city centre asking God for words of knowledge about people He wanted to speak to. There are a number of churches in Newfrontiers who have begun stepping out in prophetic evangelism but this was the first time we'd done anything like this. I thought I'd share a story from today.Before we left I felt God speak about some one with 'leg pain' and saw in my mind a diagram of the lower part of a leg.
I was walking through the Lanes with my friend Lottie, when we saw a woman sat on the doorstep of a shop. She was crying, shivering and looked in a pretty bad way. We stopped and asked if she was ok or if she wanted to talk.
The lady (who's called Claire) began to cry said 'no I'm not ok.. my mum committed suicide...'
She began to open up to us. Her mum was bi-polar and had become so ill that she had stopped work to care for her. When her mum committed suicide she ended up losing the place they lived in and becoming homeless.
She told us she had got out of hospital this morning. Some one had recently set fire to her sleeping bag when she was in it. She jumped out but because the polyester had melted on her legs, as she tore away the sleeping bag it pulled off the skin on her legs with it. She pulled up her jeans to show us all this raw skin, holes and scabs all the way up her shins. It was pretty hard to look at. It must have been excruciating.
We asked if she had got any help with accomodation. She told us she had been offered the opportunity to stay in a Women's safe house, which would provide her with counselling and she would have time to apply for housing benefit, and the opportunity to get back into teaching drama (her profession) and get her life back again. But she had to give them money by tonight or she'd lose the place. She told us she had sat there all afternoon getting more and more desperate. Nothing had happened and she had given up hope on this chance to get her life back on track.
She then said how she used to go to a church called 'CCK'(!); that it was a big place but there was such an amazing sense of community. She said a couple in the church had tried to help he with accommodation when her mum died but she had been too proud to accept their help. She thought she could mend things on her own but it had all gone wrong and she had felt too ashamed to go back. She had also become angry towards God that her mum died and left her.
We were able to say 'We go to CCK and we'd love it if you came back. God loves you and he's put us in your path today because He wants you to know that'. It was then I had remembered the word 'leg pain'! I explained that earlier in the day I felt God speak to me about some one with 'leg pain' who He wanted to make himself real to. Her face was a picture. She began welling up with tears saying 'really? seriously?' An amazing moment as she realised God knew her situation and had singled her out. So we prayed for her leg to be healed. She said the pain improved a bit.
We then asked her how much she needed to pay to get onto this scheme and secure her house for a year and she said '£18. Crazy hey'. We probed a bit further but felt she was genuine (who cares if she wasn't - it's grace!) so we put the money in her hand, much to her disbelief. She smiled, looked up and said 'thank you God..'.
Jesus is so kind.. He never gives up on us. Even when we run away or blame him, he runs out to meet us before we're even home. He reaches down to where we are. He's the most gracious person I know.
